Gladiator Games: The Roman Bloodsport Revealed

The popularity of Gladiator games was exceptional. The Gladiator games in this building were played for at least 400 years. There's a fascination in the human psyche with violence and suffering. I happened to call in at a midday show in the amphitheater, expecting some sport, fun, and relaxation. It was just the opposite. By comparison, the fights that had already taken place were merciful. Now they really got down to business. It's sheer murder. In the morning, men are thrown to the beasts. At noon, they are thrown to the spectators. We ask all the time, could we be like these guys? Could we sit around 50,000 people in a great building, watching someone die, cheering? Gladiatorial combat is termed blood sport. This means a sport where blood is ----. It is not a sport just to the point where a winner and a loser is declared. It must end in the death of one of the contestants. Who were these ancient warriors? Where did these masked men come from and what kind of life did they lead? In the next hour, we will take you back to ancient Rome and see how one of history's most sophisticated civilizations could also be viewed as one of the most brutal and savage of all time. We will learn of these ancient icons of warfare and see that the bloody spectacles in which they participated make any sporting event in modern times seem tame. How similar are these ancient battles to the death to today's spectator sports? Like the Romans before us, are we instinctively attracted to the same elements of skill, danger, combativeness and even death that they were? And with the help of state-of-the-art technical wizardry, we'll get a first-hand look at what life was really like for a Roman gladiator with an exclusive look at Hollywood's newest epic film, Gladiator. I think it's a great old-fashioned yarn that's been really well illustrated and we ain't seen this before. Visionary director Ridley Scott and acclaimed actors Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix and the legendary Richard Harris share their thoughts on being involved in this Hollywood adventure. I've done some pretty physical stuff, but this is just unrelenting. So join us with some of the world's leading scholars as we learn what was fact and what was fiction in the mysterious and fascinating world of the Roman gladiator. This was the gladiator's oath, words that sent men and women into a world of banishment, isolation and potential grisly death. Ironically, these were also words that brought a select few great fame, wealth and freedom. The gladiator is the lowest of the low. He is below the horizon socially. Literally, he was unspeakable. Nobody could talk about him. We are told the gladiators are the most sexually desirable people in the empire. It's like being a modern superstar. Gladiators are fighters who are developed as a trade, as a business. They were trained to give good entertainment to the people. It does people good to see that even slaves can fight bravely. If a mere slave can show courage, what then can a Roman do? Besides, the games harden a warrior people to the sights of carnage and prepare them for battle. Cicero. Was a way of life in the Roman Empire. The carnage experienced on the front lines of combat reached deep into the Roman psyche. I think it's obvious that a big conquest state that controls an enormous swathe of the face of this earth depends on the exercise of brute force. So, in that sense, brutality is part of their society. The origins of the gladiator come not from violent public entertainment, but from ancient Etruscan funeral processions So, to begin with, games are always strictly associated with the death of a member of the family. And then, as the political bonus of giving games becomes more and more apparent, they start to look for excuses. It's not just the death of a father. It's the death of an uncle. It's the death of a cousin. And people remember, oh, my dad died 20 years ago. I'd better celebrate his death now, because now is when I'm putting in for political office and I want to be popular. This is taking that human sacrifice and making it a little more entertaining for those who are attending the funeral. You have frescoes in Etruscan tombs where you see fights between, for instance, one man with a bag over his head who can't see what he's doing and another man who has a nasty dog on a string. And the game is, will the man who can't see what he's doing manage with a big club to beat the other man or will the dog win? These macabre amusements were the seed that would grow into an industry of spectacles of death that would thrive for centuries. Until this point in history, human killing had only been accepted in wartime. Gladiators became the first human sacrifices in the name of public entertainment. So who became gladiators? Where did they come from and what was their life like? Gladiators were either slaves, prisoners of war, people who were condemned to death, or free men who had fallen in hard times. They chose this occupation to redeem themselves and to make easy money and find glory. However, there was a social stigma associated with being a gladiator. There is a technical term in Roman law, infamia, for someone who is infamous. Which meant that he could not at any time stand for office or do anything that a member of the aristocracy could do. There are various activities that made you infamous. Appearing on the stage as an actor completely destroys your social status. Being a prostitute or being an undertaker. And gladiators are there with those who are completely beneath contempt socially. But the paradox is that gladiators were massively popular. So popular that members of the aristocracy were willing to give up everything for the thrill of the arena to be a gladiator. For most, it meant certain death. And that's something that the Romans themselves found quite hard to understand. Cicero, for instance, says it's really extraordinary that a man can take the gladiator's oath willingly. You may do anything you want with my body. How can a free man voluntarily say that? In fact, so many Romans of status were attracted to combat, Emperor Augustus was forced to initiate prohibitions on the aristocracy from entering the arena. It should be permissible for no female of free birth of less than 20 years of age and for no male of free birth less than 25 years of age to pledge himself as a gladiator or hire out his services for the arena or stage except for those who had been consigned by the deified Augustus. Roman Senate. One of the most interesting issues connected with the amphitheater, in fact, is the dual status of the gladiator. On the one hand, removed from polite society, and on the other hand, the superstar. It's something that the state felt very uncomfortable with, but it may be a measure of just how profoundly important the games were. If the state could remain uncomfortable with it for centuries, there was no way of changing the system. Another reason that a gladiator's life may have been so attractive was to avoid mandatory military service, a service that could last up to 25 years. If you became a gladiator and survived, you could expect to retire in about five years. The official perks of a gladiator are none too great. Obviously, you live a fairly hard life. Unofficially, of course, you are a superstar. Free people were drawn to it by the money. The amount that you could get per appearance was really quite high. The lowest category of gladiator that we know of could get something like three times the annual wage of a person in the Roman Empire for a single appearance, and that's if you'd never done it before. A very talented gladiator, an experienced gladiator, could get 12 times the annual income for a single appearance. There is also the element of sexual attraction, that gladiators are stars in their lifetime. Juvenal, the writer of satires, has an entire satire about the awfulness of Roman women, and he says one thing is, these great aristocratic women just go and sit in the games and lust and drool over gladiators. You look at the gladiator, he isn't even handsome. His nose has been hacked off. It doesn't matter. He's a gladiator. She wants him. Just like today's sporting events, fan clubs existed for the more popular stars, and you could buy action figure dolls of your favorite gladiator thousands of years before Michael Jordan. A famous and successful gladiator would have this following that believed that there was something magical about his name so that a later generation of gladiators might also take that same name. They took these stage names, names like Flame, and some of them were quite the opposite, calling yourself Pearl or Violet, which presumably was meant to lull the opposition into a sense of false security. I mean, if you're fighting against somebody called Pearl, you probably think you're going to beat him. A lot of gladiators have very similar names, names drawn from Greek mythology or names which are symbolic of speed or quickness. We can hear of people who would call themselves Achilles or Diomedes, who are great stars. The demand for gladiatorial games became so great that in the 70s BC, a system was set up to formally train large numbers of gladiators to meet the voracious demands for games all across the empire. It's then in the 1st century BC that the aristocrats in Rome are sending orders for hundreds of gladiators to put on at any one show. By the time it's Caesar or Augustus giving games, you get up to thousands. Julius Caesar is credited with bringing the spectacle, as it was called, to the masses. He created gladiatorial schools known as ludi that housed up to 2,000 gladiators and were owned by the emperor. Professional fighters lived in groups with slaves and prisoners of war. The whole unit was called a familia. Life in the ludi was spartan. A gladiator slept on a straw-filled mattress in a bleak cell. The walls still bear testimony to their daily lives. Most important was a record of their performance in the arena. Every gladiator has their score sheet. They remember exactly how many fights they've been in, exactly how many times they've won, how many times they've been let off. And the more you've won, the higher your status is. One of the largest and most active schools was based in Pompeii until it was buried by the Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. In the 18th century, archaeologists excavated some of the most perfectly preserved gladiatorial artifacts we have today. This archaeological gold mine gave a firsthand glimpse at pristine examples of helmets that featured intricate depictions of famous Roman battles. These helmets have rarely been seen outside of their display at the Museum of National Archaeology in Naples, Italy. It is thought that this elaborate armor was another reason many were drawn to the sands of the arena. Also found were gladiator shields, shin guards, armbands, and various weapons used in the heat of battle almost 2,000 years ago. The symbol of the Senate! All the power of Rome! It was also in this region that in 73 B.C., history's most famous gladiator, Spartacus, led a revolt of slaves and peasants that would change forever the way Roman authorities handled gladiators. Spartacus' rebellion is triggered by the fact that he absolutely rebels against being turned into a spectacle. He doesn't mind risking his life, but he won't be a spectacle, and that must have been a problem above all for these prisoners of war. Holed up in the crater of Mount Vesuvius, Spartacus defeated nine Roman commanders before he and his clan were slaughtered after two years of fighting. From then on, gladiator training camps were guarded 24 hours a day, and groups of men who spoke a similar language were separated. Profession entailed a lot of risks, and it also obviously entailed a great ego trip, I guess, in that when you were out there fighting in front of 50,000 people, I suppose you went in there to prove how exceedingly good you were. Look at gladiators who are either ruined men or barbarians. See how men who have been well-trained prefer to receive a blow rather than basely avoid it. How frequently it is made evident that there is nothing they put higher than giving satisfaction to their owner or their people. Cicero. There's great discussion about the bravery of a gladiator. As long as the gladiator is brave, you wouldn't normally kill him, and this was regarded as a natural reaction. Courage, you feel some sort of sympathy with the person, you applaud them, and therefore you give them their life back again. The Roman Empire's obsession with gladiators permeated all levels of society. Even the emperor had a favorite. In Pompeii, archaeologists uncovered a fan's graffiti of two pairs of battling gladiators. You can see their names up above them. There's Severus, there's Albanus fighting away. You can actually distinguish the different types of armor they've got. Another example of the pervasive influence of gladiators on everyday lives can be seen in these common household terracotta oil lamps, which are decorated with illustrations of gladiators and their accessories. Contrary to popular belief, the most successful gladiators were rarely killed. They were too expensive. Too much money had been invested in their training and promotion. The pinnacle of a gladiator's career was if he was awarded the coveted wooden sword, often presented by the emperor himself. With this trophy, the gladiator would be given his freedom. The weight of freedom would be to buy it. Although gladiators were slaves, they were allowed to keep a percentage of their winnings. Many freed gladiators returned to the arena because they had become accustomed to its fame and fortune. Like sporting superstars today, very few reached the upper echelon. For most gladiators, every match was a fight for their lives. One can only imagine what went through their minds as they walked this tunnel to what may have been their last appearance. What you see in the Colosseum is a symbol in many ways of the values of Roman life. As in all societies, the way that people go about their entertainments is perhaps the best way to begin to look at them and begin to understand what's in the back of their minds. It seems to me that what the Romans regarded as the absolute pinnacle of their civilization is something that we recognize as being thoroughly repugnant and inhumane. And I think it's very important for us to look hard at why the Romans thought what they were doing was acceptable and, in fact, something to be proud of. At the sight of blood, he drank a deep draught of it in all its monstrous horror and could not turn away. Instead, he lost his reason at the sight of it and took great gulps of madness. He had no idea what he was doing, but he was enchanted by the evil spectacle and became drunk on the blood-stained pleasure. Plutarch. By the first century A.D., the games had become firmly embedded in the Roman culture. Across the empire, thousands of amphitheaters had been erected for local events. It's very dangerous to think about the Colosseum as though it were the exclusive focus of amphitheater interest because every little city of any pretension throughout the empire had some kind of space where they could put on these spectacles. The Colosseum in Rome, one of the largest arenas constructed for the games, is in Pompeii. It is the oldest surviving amphitheater in the world. This inscription records the building of this amphitheater in 80 B.C., and it's the earliest we have. At the time, they hadn't yet invented the word amphitheater, and they call it a spectacle, and the inscription says, Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius, the two top magistrates, built it for the colony as a spectacle, and they dedicated it to their fellow colonists in perpetuity. As was the case with the funeral games, there were personal and political motives for local leaders to sponsor spectacles. And, of course, the payoff for them was that it became part of their legacy to their town. Particularly in a pre-Christian culture where there's no guarantee of an afterlife, it's terribly important to do something now for which you can make certain that you get remembered. Evidence of this can still be found on the ancient grave sites in Pompeii. In the street of tombs outside Pompeii, you can still see the link that existed between gladiatorial games and funerals. On them, you could find depicted gladiatorial games that were fought during their funerals. The beating heart of Rome is not the marvel of the Senate, it's the sound of the Colosseum. You bring them death, and they will love him for it. Emperors kept the population of Rome happy by putting on these games. It is a way of keeping you away from the more important issues, but on the other hand, it becomes part of its own political system. To give you an idea of the enduring popularity of the games and the demand for their existence, these spectacles flourished in the Empire for almost 700 years, from 264 B.C. to 400 A.D. A lucky spectator attending the events could expect beast hunts in the morning with exotic animals from around the world, public executions at noon, and the highly anticipated gladiatorial battles in the afternoon. You don't just have the games, you have all sorts of ceremonial attached to it. You have a great big procession when all the gladiators dress up in their finest rig. You have a band, music playing, processing down the streets, arriving in the amphitheater. And in the gate, they would go around the arena several times in parade, they would have a warm-up session, and then after that, they would file in front of the emperor sitting in his box, and then they would declare how they wish to fight, either to the first wound or to the death. It's essential to have as much variety as possible in the games. You don't just want gladiators. You also have acrobats, tightrope walkers. You then cross over between different types. You see if you can get elephants to do tightrope walking. And in 63 A.D., a new attraction was added to the games. There were female gladiators. They were regarded as an absolutely special treat. I mean, they're sufficiently rare that you would advertise them up front as something spectacular that you were going to have in the show. Part of the interest, of course, would be that they would fight with at least one breast bear, and you obviously would go partially to see very attractive women in very scanty clothes fighting with each other. The Romans wouldn't have wanted to see a woman fighting a man, because it would be an unequal combat, and there would be no fun in that. These unusual combatants, such as Amazonia and Achillea, remained in vogue for more than a century and a half before Emperor Septimus Severus had all female gladiators banned in the year 200. Advertising was important in ancient times. Filling the Colosseum was no problem, but in the outer provinces, attracting enough people to fill a 20,000-seat arena like this in Pompeii was a challenge. The entire population of Pompeii was only 10,000. This is the facade of a house that's on the main street of Pompeii, and originally it was absolutely covered with advertisements for games. There will be a procession, a pompa, a venatio, a beast hunt. There will be awnings over the amphitheater, bella. There will be a special kind of beast that leaps upon people who wear turquoise. Also, town criers were used, and a common practice was to advertise on tombs. This, in Pompeii, announced upcoming games that would have 20 pairs of gladiators. In one well-advertised contest in 59 A.D., a bloody riot broke out between the citizens of Pompeii and the neighboring town of New Syria. Because of this incident depicted in this famous fresco now in Naples, all future games were banned in Pompeii. So why were the games so popular? In addition to the thrill of watching blood sports, the average person could sit in the same building as his local leader. In Rome, this meant the emperor himself. They want to know what's the character of this guy. Is he actually a responsible sort of man who ought to be an emperor, or is he a beast? Has he got cruelty built into him? Is he enjoying it too much? The violence was obviously part of the attraction, and we can tell that from so many images which show actual flow of blood and wounds gushing and so on. Mosaics that sponsors put on their floors to demonstrate to their clients that they had sponsored this magnificent spectacle. And after one bite, Satyrus was so drenched with blood that as he came away, the mob roared and witnessed to this second baptism. You have taken a good bath. This was the traditional cry with which an audience greeted the flow of blood. Perpetua. The popularity of seeing death, watching death, is a very, very curious phenomenon. Remember that in the ancient world, people lived with death all around them all the time. It was a very violent world. Your life was very short. There were no pain-killing medicines. You lived a very violent, difficult existence. So watching gladiatorial fights was in a way watching it happen to somebody else instead of to you. Blood sports meant more to the Romans than watching brutal killings. There was also a great fascination with the different armor and weapons of the gladiators and how well they stood up against each other. You would have a retiarius who was very vulnerable because he had no armor at all except for a very small shoulder guard. And he was pitted against a heavily armed gladiator who was virtually impregnable, but of course weighed down by his armor so he couldn't have the mobility that the retiarius had. The retiarius or netman carried a trident, a dagger, and a net with edges that were weighed down with metal balls like a fishnet. His likely opponent would be a murmillo gladiator, sometimes referred to as a fishman because his processional helmet had a fish on it. These two types were representative of the two major categories of gladiators. There were the paramulati, who had small shields and light armor, and the scutati, who had big heavy shields and much armor. Within these categories were gladiators that fought with a very specific style and dress based on nations the Romans had conquered in battle. Also you could fight on horseback and those of the andabati who would go into the arena with a blindfold on themselves and on the horse, and they would just go at each other, whacking right and left and waiting to see which bit they chopped off. The most common encounter was a simple duel between two gladiators. There's evidence that amphitheater bands were present to play music to match the mood of the match, almost like a music score for a feature film. A top ranked gladiator would rarely ever face a foe of equal skill. The most popular stars fought only on rare and important occasions, anywhere from one to five times a year. Gladiators are highly trained professionals. You have to pay a very substantial fine if you get the gladiator hurt. We get a figure as much as 50 times the rental price. There's a controversy about how many gladiators actually died fighting in the amphitheater. Some people would put the figure as high as 50%. I prefer a figure somewhere between 5 and 10%. It is a fact that gladiators did die. What is not known is the exact manner in which a gladiator was ordered to kill his opponent. Well, we know that when a gladiator had acknowledged defeat, the umpire would appeal to the spectators for a signal as to whether they believed the gladiator deserved a reprieve or whether he had not fought well enough and must therefore be dispatched. If the crowd approved of the way he fought, they would yell Missa! Missa! He's dismissed. He's free. If instead they did not approve of the way he fought, they would yell, Yugula! Yugula! Get him in the jugular vein. The person who has the final decision on life and death is the editor of the games, the man who's put them on. In many cases, that was the emperor himself. We know for sure that when the gladiator is defeated and asks to be let off, the sign of surrender is putting up a finger or a hand. The literary sources describe the gesture that the man who's giving the games make and they say pressing his thumb or turning his thumb. Was it thumbs up means you're all right or was it the other way around? And what happens is historically a decision is made by filmmakers and the thumbs up sign comes out of a filmmaker's picture of the Roman world, which then becomes a universal sign for okay. Occasionally, a gladiator was finished off by a man he had previously spared. There is an epitaph to a fallen gladiator in which he advised those who came after him to beware. It read, Take warning from my fate. Give no quarter, whoever the fallen may be. And in many cases, a gladiator who wanted to go out with dignity, who wanted to go out with courage, would simply tilt his head back and expose his jugular vein for this slice. Other times they would be stabbed and then the winning gladiator would put his foot on top of the body of the one he had just conquered. Another spectacle which drew big crowds was the beast hunt, featuring wild animals from all reaches of the Roman Empire. The animals were stocked by professional hunters called Venatores. In many ways, the amphitheater was a universal zoo. There was no way the average Roman could get over to North Africa and see a crocodile for real, or a rhinoceros or something, but you could see these in the amphitheater, and there was a tremendous interest in how they worked, how the animals actually behaved, how fast they could run. A wide variety of animals were brought in. We also have zoos outside of Rome specifically for fierce animals where they would be raised, and so you'd have your leopards, your lions. Clearly, gazelles were very popular. Ostriches were very popular. In fact, some animals would reappear from entertainment to entertainment. We know that there were particularly ferocious bears who people would come to see, and they would have names like Fierce, Nasty, Death, etc. The other events of the day would include public executions of condemned prisoners and Christians. All these public displays served a common purpose for the Romans. We look at the conflict between man and beast and think about how this represents a control over nature. And then, of course, when we look at the execution of criminals, what you see there is again society taking on its enemies. And the totality of the display, the control over nature, the control over your enemies, the valor of the combatants, is what seems to have excited the Romans. We know that execution in antiquity was always public, partly for self-deterrent purposes, partly so that the public could see that proper retribution was being taken. The total carnage of humans and animals was staggering. On the opening day of the Colosseum it was reported that 5,000 beasts were disposed of with the right degree of cruelty. And what of the gladiator? How must it feel as one is about to enter an arena with 50,000 to 80,000 people all there to witness the fight for life or death? There's got to be a tremendous amount of adrenaline running through your veins as you step out there and face the person. And of course there every once in a while people completely lose it and run away. It was quite common for prisoners to commit suicide rather than face certain death by sword or beast. Not for fear of death, but for the humiliation of being killed as a form of entertainment. The games took a quantum leap in size, scale, and savagery when gladiators took to the sands of the house of death. A condemned criminal who, hanging on no unreal cross, gave up his vitals to a Caledonian bear. His manual limbs still living, though parts dripped gore, and in all his body was nowhere a body's shape. Martullo. Provincials from very, very far afield would make the pilgrimage to Rome to see the greatest amphitheatre and the most extravagant spectacles, hopefully in the presence of the one person who ruled the world, namely the Roman Emperor. The Colosseum is an absolute feat of engineering. Simply in terms of design and execution, it is one of the greatest Roman achievements. And the paradox is that with all this technology what they're creating is a machine for killing. It was built to make a statement, and it was built to last. For twenty centuries we have marvelled at its design, and have been drawn to it with thoughts of the death and pain that this monument produced. Your Holy Father is pleased to give you the Legionnaire of Scipio! The building was opened to the public in 79 AD, and was called the Flavian Amphitheatre, named after the Flavian dynasty which replaced Nero. In fact, the Colosseum was built directly over Nero's private lake. So by building this Colosseum here, you're giving back to the people all of this piece of downtown real estate, and you're taking private imperial property and opening it for public use. It is also one of the greatest expressions of imperial power, just because of the sheer size of the building. The building covered six acres, stood 160 feet high, and held anywhere from 45,000 to 80,000 spectators, depending on standing room. The Romans wasted no time in offering the biggest spectacles ever staged for its citizens. Rome is the entertainment capital of the world. It is where all the best performers are going to be. It is where the center of entertainment, where the standards are set. It's the LA of its time. In celebrating the opening of the amphitheater, Emperor Titus gave games for 100 straight days and boasted of the 9,000 animals that were killed. Trajan gave one set of games that lasted an amazing 122 consecutive days in which some claim 11,000 people and 10,000 animals were killed. The scale of these imperial performances is absolutely stupendous. Augustus puts in his will the precise numbers of gladiators that performed in his reign that he paid for, and that is 10,000. Emperors, in a sense, have to compete with each other, with the memory of the games that other people have given. You don't want to get a reputation as a cheapskate. You've got to do at least as well as your predecessor, if not go one better. And if Julius Caesar did what some experts believe was possible, he stunned the Romans when he had the floor of the Colosseum flooded to stage extravagant sea battles reenacted with ships manned by slaves and prisoners. To make it more interesting, the ships would be set on fire as the men battled for their lives. Whether these naval battles ever took place is hotly debated amongst the scholars. It doesn't seem that you could flood the Colosseum. I mean, it's got a wooden floor. If you tried to pour water into it, there's no clear way how you could get it out. And it's not actually clear how you could hook it up very easily to get it in. You can't stage a naval battle in the Colosseum as we now have it, because the underneath part has been turned into beast cages. But in the very beginning, when it was first built, that underneath part hadn't yet been constructed. And at that stage, it was possible to flood it. The Colosseum became the template for all other major amphitheatres. And we see later amphitheatres copying the kinds of things that the Colosseum pioneered. And particularly one thinks about the subterranean structures. Beneath the floor of the Colosseum, you'd find a maze of corridors, ramps, lifts, pulleys, cages and trapdoors, manned by hundreds of slaves to coordinate precisely timed theatrical surprises. The best example of these inner workings below can be found in a surviving ruin in Pozzuoli, Italy. We're actually underneath the arena, in this enormous vaulted space, two storeys high, containing the cages for the wild animals and for the gladiators, who could be let out and sent up through a series of trapdoors to emerge on stage up above us. I think it's important to realise how seductive the amphitheatre was. All of the pomp and ceremony, the extravagance of it all, must have been addictive. Perhaps the main thing is the sudden sense that you get when you enter a building like that, of being part of a suddenly created society. It has come there with a common interest. And a shared passion even prompted some emperors to enter the arena. Emperor Commodus would get into the arena, both in gladiatorial fights and also in fighting directly wild animals. This was much appreciated by the crowd. It was a sort of extra beyond the programmed spectacle. Commodus is a huge, heavily muscled person with a thick neck, who it was rumoured might possibly be the son of a gladiator and the very promiscuous wife of Marcus Aurelius Faustina. By 2 AD, Rome was home to a million people from all over the globe. When it came to entertainment, the games of the Colosseum appealed to all. They can't simply go to the theatre and listen to something in Latin or Greek, because they don't necessarily all speak Latin or Greek. Gladiatorial games are wonderfully accessible for everybody. No linguistic barrier, and it's something they can all appreciate, can all participate in. Next to the cost of maintaining the massive Roman army, staging these extravagant games was the most expensive venture for the Empire. Games were a multi-million dollar industry in Roman terms, and there was a huge investment in the entire infrastructure, not just the supply of gladiators and beasts, but also the cleaning of the Colosseum. The whole of the outside of the amphitheatre was ringed with service buildings. This included the scenery building, the hospital, the armory, and the huge disposal pit for all the corpses, both animal and human. In addition to financing the personnel in all these departments, hundreds of sailors were employed to man the huge awning that shaded the arena. Spectators were treated to free bread and tokens that could be cashed in for large gifts, even real estate. Amidst the 20 centuries of trash and excavation of a Colosseum drain in the 1970s, uncovered other tokens that were used for a more sinister purpose. And among this refuse were also found little lead tokens which had been sold to people with the name of the gladiator that the person wished to die. And so these are sort of bad luck tokens, much like a sort of voodoo doll. The scale of the killings in the arena increased dramatically. Trajan boasted of 5,000 gladiators in the ring at one time, and the persecution of Christians reached alarming heights. Yet even this didn't satisfy the public's bloodlust. The Romans, the more they watch, the more they see people being killed, the more used to it they become, and the more indifferent to it morally they become. This insatiable thirst for blood had to come to an end, and it did. But the connection of violence and public entertainment has continued to thrive and can still be found in modern sports today. 2,000 years ago, the Roman masses were drawn to the spectacle. Today, Hollywood creates its own spectacle. Along with trap doors and chain combatants, it uses advanced computer generated imagery. Gladiator's life is extremely dangerous. We had to do some of the very dangerous things that gladiators do that just couldn't be done without visual effects. I was drawn to those animals. Just, like, fascinated by them. Lions and tigers. Pretty special. You just keep going, You've got to be constantly aware. Remind yourself what you're dealing with. Because if he gets a hold of you, you'll be dead in a second. Russell Crowe worked very closely with the tigers. A blue screen was used to remove the animal trainers, and other digital elements enhanced the reality of the scene. We replaced the team that was holding the tiger, and we also did some atmospheric dust where we dusted up the whole plate, and did things like extend the shadows to make it look like the Russell Crowe and the tiger are nearly in contact. Where I enjoy myself most I think is creating worlds. Sometimes new worlds, i.e. science fiction, or recreating worlds which is historical. And this is a world I hadn't ever thought about. I mean, how often you get to build the Coliseum, do the German front in the Danube, where you have thousands of troops fighting. One more! One more! You suddenly realise when you actually do these films, every move is like not moving ten people, but it's like moving, can you move those thousand people over there? Because the light's changing. It's been a long time since a film of this subject matter has been made on this scale. Crowe and director Ridley Scott are part of an impressive team making the first Gladiator film since Spartacus forty years ago. It's going to be a magnificent marriage of old-fashioned filmmaking values and absolute cutting-edge technology in terms of the computer work that we're doing on the film. He's the general of the army and is the hero of our story. Max goes on a very strange journey because at the beginning of the film, he's the general in the army who doesn't really want to be there anymore. Let me go home. Richard Harris portrays Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Joaquin Phoenix's son, Commodus, the heir apparent to the Roman Empire. Have I missed it? Have I missed the battle? You have missed the war. I've always been envious of him. He's a man of honour and great inner strength. Clearly, Marcus Aurelius would have preferred Maximus as his son. The Marcus Aurelius character is, you know, conscious of the fact that his son is, in quotes from the film, is not a moral man. So the son's assumption that he would step into the shoes of his father was absolute. So it begins where the father says, You will not be emperor. Which wise old man is to take my place? My powers will pass to Maximus. But Commodus had other plans for the general and his family. Ride until dawn and then execute him. Look at me! Promise me that you will look after my family. Your family will meet you in the afterlife. So from being a general who's in control of, you know, 10,000 troops is now shackled, being sold off as a slave in a market in Morocco. He then realizes the only way he can stay alive is to kill. So he has to bring what he used to do as a professional if he becomes a really good gladiator that he can get in front of this guy and exact his revenge. The young emperor has arranged a series of spectacles to commemorate his father, Marcus Aurelius. That's the whole irony of the story is that the very games he wants to bring, his whole idea of getting the masses to respond to him is what ultimately brings his nemesis to Rome. Remove your helmet and tell me your name. My name is Gladiator. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. Vengeance. Today I saw a slave become more powerful than the emperor was. We think that it's so beyond our comprehension that we can't understand how 80,000 people could watch people wave swords at each other in the Colosseum. On the other hand, you turn on television nowadays, any day of the week, and you'll see wild animal attacks, advertisements for people being washed away in floods and what have you. Basically gladiatorial contests, whether it's one-on-one, boxing, American football, bullfighting, soccer. There's a funny kind of parallel to that. And was it any different from then other than the fact that people died? No, fundamentally it's the same. Constantine the Great banned all gladiatorial contests in 325 A.D., but they continued until 500 A.D. Scholars have many theories as to why the games ended. The influence of Christianity, the prohibitive costs of importing exotic beasts, and finally, the spectacles simply lost their social purpose. However, 2,000 years after the demise of this popular public entertainment, we still ask the questions. Could we be like it? Or are they completely different from us? Are they monsters? Did they work differently as human beings? And I think we know that there's a bit in us that is absolutely there with the Romans. We could be like them.